1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to method for Power-efficient Deactivated SCC measurement with no PCC interruption.
2. Description of the Related Art
The term “wireless” normally refers to an electrical or electronic operation that is accomplished without the use of a “hard wired” connection. “Wireless communications” is the transfer of information over a distance without the use of electrical conductors or wires. The distances involved may be short (a few meters for television remote controls) or very long (thousands or even millions of kilometers for radio communications). The best known example of wireless communications is the cellular telephone. Cellular telephones use radio waves to enable an operator to make phone calls to another party, from many locations worldwide. They can be used anywhere, as long as there is a cellular telephone site to house equipment that can transmit and receive signals, which are processed to transfer both voice and data to and from the cellular telephones.
There are various well-developed and well-defined cellular communications technologies. For example, the Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) is a well-defined and commonly adopted communications system, which uses time division multiple access (TDMA) technology, which is a multiplex access scheme for digital radio, to send voice, data, and signalling data (such as a dialed telephone number) between mobile phones and cell sites. The CDMA2000 is a hybrid mobile communications 2.5G/3G (generation) technology standard that uses code division multiple access (CDMA) technology. The UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) is a 3G mobile communications system, which provides an enhanced range of multimedia services over the GSM system. Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi) is a technology defined by the 802.11 engineering standard and can be used for home networks, mobile phones, and video games, to provide a high-frequency wireless local area network. The LTE (Long Term Evolution) and the LTE-Advanced evolved from the LTE is a 4G mobile communications system, which provides a high-speed data transmission over the 2G and 3G systems.
The LTE Advanced introduces a mechanism for aggregating up to five LTE carriers to extend its maximum transmission bandwidth up to 100 MHz. The mechanism is termed Carrier Aggregation (CA) in LTE. In CA, two or more Component Carriers (CCs) are aggregated in order to provide wider transmission bandwidths up to 100 MHz. The CA can be applied to aggregate both contiguous and non-contiguous CCs. It is also possible to configure a User Equipment (UE) to aggregate a different number of CCs originating from the same evolved Node B (eNB) and of possibly different bandwidths in the uplink (UL) and the downlink (DL). The UE may simultaneously receive or transmit radio frequency (RF) signals via one or multiple CCs depending on its capabilities. A record of configured set of CCs aggregated for signal and data transmission may be maintained by both the UE and the eNB for keeping information regarding to the configured CCs for the UE. There is generally one Primary Cell (PCell) (or, Primary Component Carrier (PCC)) and one or more Secondary Cell (SCell) (or, Secondary Component Carrier (SCC)) in a configured set of CCs.
The current LTE standard allows no PCell interruption for deactivated SCell measurement requirement when the measurement cycle measCycleSCell is short (less than 640 ms). To meet this no PCell interruption requirement, for the UE with one or more RF components shared by the aggregated CCs, the bandwidth of the RF components should be extended to a level capable of receiving and processing the RF signals of the aggregated CCs all the time. However, it is not power efficient for the UE to extend the bandwidth of the RF components so wide all the time.
Therefore, a novel method for deactivated Scell measurement is required.